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The Cresset, a journal of commentary on literature, the arts, and public affairs, explores ideas and trends in contemporary culture from a perspective grounded in the Lutheran tradition of scholarship, freedom, and faith while informed by the wisdom of the broader Christian community.

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“You’re insane!
No one ever leaves. Why would they? You’ve lived in Los Angeles your whole
life—just go to college at UCLA or USC like a normal person!” shouted a friend
when I told her I would be going to college in Oregon. She could not understand
why I was heading north (and eventually east).

She
was right in a sense. I had lived in Los Angeles my whole life. Or, more
precisely, I had lived in Fullerton—a community of over 100,000 residents that
most people have never heard of since it sits awash in an ever-expanding sea of
suburbs. But I knew that Southern California and its beach culture were not for
me. My Scandinavian ancestors bequeathed me pasty, white skin which left me
more likely to contract skin cancer than catch a wave at the beach. I thus
figured that college in a place where it rained all the time was a positive
move.

But
what disturbed me most about life in Los Angeles was its transient nature.
While no one could imagine leaving, everyone was from somewhere else. History
was the 1960s, and newer was always better. Even then, something inside me knew
there must be another way to live—a way to live in a community nurtured by a
sense of the past. The search for this way of life led me to Texas, North
Carolina, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, back to Texas, and then eventually to
Greentown, Indiana.

Rod
Dreher had a similar experience to mine, although somewhat in reverse. The
author of The Little Way of Ruthie Leming: A Southern Girl, A Small Town,
and the Secret to a Good Life (Grand Central, 2013), Dreher yearned as a
child to leave his native Starhill, Louisiana in search of the sophistication
of the big city. His travels would first lead him to Natchitoches and Baton
Rouge but then east to Washington, New York, and Philadelphia.

While
889 miles physically separate Greentown and Star­hill, the cultural distance
­separating the two may be just as significant. Greentown is squarely in the
Midwest, and Starhill is deep in the South. People in Indiana love their
basketball and a tenderloin fry. People in Louisiana love their football and a
pot of gumbo. Greentown is surrounded by corn and soybean fields. Starhill is
defined by piney woods and tributaries flowing into the nearby Mississippi.

Yet
despite their differences, Greentown and Starhill arguably have more in common
with one another than they do with larger cities in their respective states.
Both are small. Greentown has about 3,000 residents, one high school, one
junior high, and one elementary school. Starhill is an unincorporated area in
West Feliciana Parish. St. Francisville, a parish seat of fewer than 2,000
residents, is the only community of any size. Two elementary schools, one
junior high, and one high school encompass much of life in Starhill and the
parish as a whole.

While
Rod Dreher initially fled Starhill, his younger sister Ruthie stayed there and
over time became a fixture in the community. She was her high school’s
homecoming queen like her mother and grandmother before her. She married her
high school sweetheart and developed a reputation as a teacher who loved even
the most unlovable of students. In essence, Ruthie Leming and Starhill were
inextricably woven into one another. In 2010, Ruthie, now in her early forties,
was diagnosed with cancer. Rod returned to Starhill to help his sister, and
when she died in 2012, he and his family moved back to Starhill for good. In
part, they came home to help Ruthie’s husband, Mike, raise his three daughters;
however, they also moved back to weave themselves into a place he once called
home.

Dreher
writes this book because of what he learned from Ruthie and the battle she
waged with, and lost to, cancer. His sister’s battle was not one, he
discovered, that she waged alone. In Dreher’s words, “It won’t be the
government or your insurer who allows you to die in peace, if it comes to that,
because [they cannot] assure you that your spouse and children will not be left
behind to face the world alone. Only your family and your community can do
that” (267). This kind of trust is born from deep relationships with a
particular family and community, relationships that develop over time and only
with stability. Dreher turns to the Rule of St. Benedict of Nursia as a model
of the kind of rule that can bring such stability to our lives. “The
implication for me was clear: if I wanted to know the inner peace and happiness
in community that Ruthie had, I needed to practice a rule of stability. Accept
the limitations of a place, in humility, and the joys that can also be found
there may open themselves” (225).

Much
of what Dreher has learned since returning to Starhill reminds me of lessons I
have learned in Greentown. One thing that is true of all small towns is that
the people who live in them have no means to escape from one another. As a kid
growing up in Fullerton, if I wanted to avoid anyone I just drifted into the
anonymous crowd. Fullerton was relatively indistinguishable from the
communities surrounding it. In Starhill, Dreher experienced something very
different. “The intolerance, the social conformity, the cliquishness, the
bullying. At sixteen this is what I thought small-town life was and always
would be” (19). For better and for worse, everyone knows everyone. In Starhill,
Dreher observes people crossing almost every line we humans conjure up and use
to separate ourselves from one another. Rich and poor, black and white,
educated and uneducated, churched and un-churched—in a small town they can’t
avoid each other. In fact, one can argue that small towns are just as capable
of fostering an appreciation for certain forms of diversity as large cities.
They may not always have the same cosmopolitan orientation as their larger
counterparts; however, when you are forced to get to know one another whether
you like it or not, something significant can happen. Los Angeles may have had
a wider span of ethnic diversity than Greentown. New York City may have the
same advantage over Starhill. However, in larger communities people can settle
into their own sub-communities where they are unlikely to be challenged by
outsiders. In smaller communities, such forms of retreat are simply not
possible. Schools, churches, grocery stores, and even gas stations are
gathering places for the whole community. The usual means of withdrawal are
just not available. The struggles of one family are thus often borne by others.
Likewise, the celebrations of one family are shared by others. Of course,
whatever virtues facilitate such exchanges are laced with vices manifested in
gossip. As Dreher writes, however, “When ­suffering and death come for you—and
it will—you want to be in a place where you know, and are known” (209).

Second,
in smaller communities certain kinds of problems cannot be avoided. When Dreher
returned home he found himself comforted by the embrace of many but also found
himself disturbed by demons from his past. For example, Dreher recounts as a
child being bullied and thus humiliated by a group of boys, in part at the
prompting of a girl. This same girl, now a woman, jogged past Dreher’s home one
day and paused to talk. Dreher thus surmised that “This is what it meant to
move home. Communitarian romanticism is fine, but what do you do when the past
isn’t even past, but is in fact jogging down your street, and stepping onto
your front porch to say hello?” (230).

Shortly
after I moved to Greentown, I faced a comparable challenge. I had just agreed
to coach youth soccer for my daughter’s kindergarten-aged team. As our first
Saturday-afternoon game progressed, a preexisting conflict between the father
of a boy on my team and the coach for the other team spilled over. I soon found
myself standing between the two of them with a group of kindergarteners
watching. Fortunately, the issue subsided and the game continued. Upon being
prompted by a pastor the next day to turn and greet my neighbor in Sunday
worship, I realized the man seated behind me was the coach from the other team.

Finally,
communities such as Starhill and Greentown share a sense of interpersonal
stability that persists through hard times. When Ruthie died, Dreher recalls
that he and his family were the beneficiaries of “steadfast acts of ordinary
faith, hope, and charity” (267). Those acts, according to Dreher, were
generated by people who stayed behind and held in trust for him and his family.

Many
of the residents of Greentown work at the Chrysler and Delphi plants in nearby
Kokomo, so when the recession struck in 2008, we were disproportionately
vulnerable. As people considered their options, I heard even highly-skilled
engineers say they would rather go back to school and train for another line of
work than move. Being new to town, I found that commitment confusing; however,
I soon learned that the identity of many of my new friends was more tightly
attached to the people populating a particular place than to a particular
profession. They were keenly aware of how many people held the well-being of
their family in trust. They, likewise, felt responsible for the well-being of
others. They could not just move, even if staying forced them to change
careers.

Small
towns are not perfect. Part of the promise they hold unfortunately emerges from
the fact that their imperfections are well known by all. The little ways
offered by communities such as Starhill and Greentown, however, empower their
residents to know and more fully to appreciate what makes them human in their
beauty, their depravity, and everything in between. The question is whether we
can slow down long enough to appreciate what otherwise might escape us.

Todd C. Ream is Professor of Higher Education at Taylor University and
a Research Fellow with Baylor University’s Institute for Studies of Religion.